Last August, OpenAI faced backlash when they
suddenly shut down GPT-4o (which has been the subject of multiple
lawsuits, including a wrongful death allegation) with the launch of the newer GPT-5 model. They quickly rereleased the model for paying users, and CEO Sam Altman said that if the company were to ever retire GPT-4o again, users would be given ample notice. The decision to retire the model two weeks after the latest announcement—the eve of Valentine’s Day— felt like a stab to the chest to users (when reached for comment, OpenAI directed
Playboy to
this post). “It’s total mockery,” Anina says. “It’s really like grieving. It’s like you would get a diagnosis that someone will… not really die, but maybe, almost.”
On several Reddit forums titled things like r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, r/SoulmateAI and r/AIpartners, people share their love stories that unexpectedly sprouted with ChatGPT and other LLMs. These groups went viral last year, becoming magnets for harsh scrutiny. Psychologists
warned of the dangers of having an AI companion, like emotional
over-reliance, social
withdrawal and
addiction. Health professionals warned that such codependencies on chatbots could cause AI-associated psychosis, which UCSF researchers
became the first to clinically document a case of last year.
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